After plenty of sweat, moshing, fluoro tape, budgie smugglers, and a lot of laughs and tears, Bluejuice’s farewell headline tour finally came to its inevitable end in Sydney over the weekend. A fitting end for the band who kicked off their storied career in the NSW capital.

Except, the vitriolic rockers were originally supposed to finish up their Restrospectable tour with a North Queensland triumvirate, hitting up venues in Mackay, Townsville, and Cairns. What’s the deal?

Just Australia getting in its own way again, that’s all. According to a statement released by the band’s longtime manager, Todd Wagstaff, total sales for the North Queensland shows amounted to just a “few dozen tickets”, which proves a problem since North Queensland is ridiculously costly to tour.

“It seems like there are some mixed messages re: the Nth Queensland shows, so let me set the record straight,” writes Wagstaff. “The fact is that Bluejuice ‘sold out’ their national tour but for some reason we only sold a few dozen tickets to all the shows in Nth Queensland.”

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“Due to geography and circumstance North Queensland is amongst the most expensive parts of Australia to tour for a mid-sized band because you need to travel with a large PA and extra crew, which costs an additional $5k per night.”

This would mean that Bluejuice’s expenses would end up totalling $10,000 per night to cover “travel, production crew, and stage wages and commissions”, as they make the rounds playing to near-empty venues.

“As the long term manager of Bluejuice I was not going to have the guys go into Nth Queensland and lose tens of thousands of dollars,” Wagstaff insists. “The band have slogged it out on the road for 13 years playing incredible shows… I reasonably didn’t want the band to loose that advantage going into Nth Queensland without some guarantees.”

According to Wagstaff, the band communicated with the North Queensland venues involved and even invested “some extra [money]” into marketing and getting the message out there, but to no avail – no extra tickets were shifted.

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“Bluejuice played the best shows of their career in Sydney last week to wrap things up in their hometown. It would have been a massive anticlimax to go and lose tens of thousands of dollars playing poorly attended shows in Nth Queensland. The guys have had some great shows in Nth Queensland and we listened to all the noise people made on social media, but nobody followed through with ticket purchases.”

“For the people who did buy tickets you get a full refund and our absolute apology. For you, it sucks, but we hope in particular you appreciate the predicament and remember the good times,” Wagstaff concludes.

North Queensland sits alongside Perth as one of the most treacherous spots in Australia in which to stage a concert tour. The difficulty of touring Perth has been well-publicised, with Soundwave promoter AJ Maddah removing the WA capital from the Soundwave Festival itinerary earlier this year.

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